


A Prodigy's Guide to Loneliness, Love, and Experimental Experimentation

by ExaltedBrand



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Cunnilingus, Cute, Dating, Even more improper use of magic, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Flirting, French Kissing, Humor, Kissing, Light Masochism, Making Out, Meta, Scientific Sex, Self-Discovery, Sex Toys, Sexual Experimentation, Sexual Tension, Silly, Spanking, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26461513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExaltedBrand/pseuds/ExaltedBrand
Summary: Lute, struggling to wrap her head around the idea of love, decides that the best course of action is to conduct some field research.Soleil is more than happy to help.
Relationships: Lute/Soleil
Comments: 13
Kudos: 28





	1. Hypothesis

**Author's Note:**

> Pairing suggestion from GeneratedUsername

There was little doubt that Lute was a prodigy. Her mastery of magic, both theoretical and applied, stood second to none even among the lofty ranks of the Order of Heroes. Picking up new skills, too, was effortless: she’d come to understand the fundamentals of swimming at the beach in just five minutes and eighteen seconds, and had swiftly mastered the necessary motor movements in a further four minutes and twenty-two seconds – a record slightly under her target of a total of eight minutes, but a respectable figure nonetheless. She’d taken it upon herself to commit the names and appearances of every herb in Askr, Nifl, Múspell, and beyond to memory so that the absence of a light magic user wouldn’t come as a hindrance in the field. She’d even contributed several dissertations to the Order’s library, all of which had been so overwhelming in their depth and genius that they had so far gone completely unread.

Indeed, as was befitting a mage of her profound intellect, she was without equal in every field imaginable.

Every field save for love.

For reasons Lute couldn’t entirely comprehend, love was constantly in the air among the Order of Heroes. Its members seemed almost conditioned to falling in love with one another upon joining the Order, as if struck by some manner of malady or enchantment, and every week she’d see a new couple sprout up from the unlikeliest of roots. Love, as a general concept, offered no benefit to one’s mana regeneration or spell efficacy, nor did it provide better reflexes or improved health or confer resistance against the elements. It was simply a rush of chemicals produced in the brain in response to pleasing external stimuli: a reaction far too random and prone to variation to ever be of any benefit to anyone in any way, shape or form.

It was, ultimately, an inefficient use of time and energy. A frivolity that had no place among logic and reason, and a waste of time that distracted from the process of learning. Romance could not be quantified or qualified. It was a meaningless word, a ploy to dull the mind and render one vulnerable to outside influence. And Lute was too intelligent to be fooled by such an obvious ruse. As the greatest mage who had ever lived, her mind was her most crucial weapon. There could be no room for distractions.

But for all the time that had passed since her arrival in Askr, love wouldn’t leave her alone. Every month, there seemed to be something new: the Day of Devotion, a festival celebrating the exchange of sugar-laced confectionary with one’s romantic partner; a bizarre bridal festival in honour of marriage, that inescapable web of love that would forever taint one’s prospects of self-improvement; and most recently a dance known as the Heroes’ Ball, in which lovers and strangers alike had mindlessly frolicked to the shrill disharmony of stringed instruments and danced endlessly through the night.

Lute, as befitting a proud academic, had no interest in any of these tedious events. But all the same, she was beginning to feel an undeniable frustration towards her inexperience with love. It wasn’t because she had any real desire for a relationship – rather, it represented a significant gap in her knowledge that until now she had taken very few steps to rectify. For a prodigy, it was an unforgivable flaw.

As such, she’d endeavoured to research love from a methodical, analytical standpoint. It was, of course, purely for the purpose of self-improvement. She was not obsessed, nor did she actually crave such worthless distractions beyond gaining an understanding of the phenomenon.

These past few weeks had been spent, as Lute’s time often was, in the castle’s library. But rather than pouring over ancient tomes and essays on magical theory, she had instead delved into an entirely new realm: literature.

The library, as it turned out, had a surprisingly extensive collection of romantic literature from across the different worlds. Tales of romance, love, and adventure. Stories of star-crossed lovers, sacrifices, and forbidden fruit. Lurid, lust-filled smut in which characters would engage in act after act of sheer depravity without any consistency or explanation save for the whims of the author.

It was astonishing, she thought, that such drivel could be so popular. But after a significant weeding-out process, she had been left with a reasonable selection of texts worth studying. With a veritable tower of books at her side—some soft romance, some absurdly filthy, and some even both at once—Lute immersed herself in the subject of love.

As she read, she took notes in her old leather-bound journal.

  * Love, as has been most commonly described, is a multifaceted, highly intense feeling of a positive nature that one experiences as an emotional attachment to another person. This attachment can typically be towards anyone of any gender, although love between two people of the opposite gender (‘heterosexual’) occurs in literature with the highest frequency: 65 instances within a present sample size of 90 novels.
  * This love can be experienced in varying strengths, and this variation is among its most illogical facets. Love may be a slow burn of many years, experienced as a deepening friendship, or it may be a short, powerful burst of passion that most typically results in intercourse, ‘dirty talk’ (see Page 45, paragraph 3), or other types of physical intimacy (see Page 23, paragraph 5, for quoted examples) within an absurdly short length of time.
  * The benefits of love, such as they are described in literature, include feelings of comfort, companionship, and safety. The most common cause of love is meeting another person who shares your interests, worldviews, and/or personal traumas, but such encounters seem to be at the whim of the author and thus cannot be relied upon in a real world experience of love. Furthermore, the language of romantic literature, particularly that of erotic literature, is often rife with embellishment and biological inaccuracies, such as when an author describes a man’s genitals as “exploding into a shower of liquid love”. These discrepancies call into question the aforementioned benefits of love.
  * Love can be experienced equally by any gender and any sexual orientation (see Page 58, paragraph 1, for definitions of sexual orientations), and the emotional effects remain uniform. However, the physical form love takes for couples of different sexualities varies depending on the biological demands of intercourse between the two genders. One romance novel I have found very helpful in demonstrating these biological differences is titled “ _His Big Strong Hands_ ” (L. Zursten, year 454, Valentia). While the novel is of dubious literary merit, it demonstrates the specifics of a male-on-male relationship, describing in vivid detail the necessary positions and alterations—



Lute’s thoughts were distracted by the soft pitter-patter of footsteps along the library floor. They moved with purpose and confidence, but Lute didn’t turn her head or pay whoever it was any mind. It was only the middle of the day, and the library was hardly private, even if only a scholar without equal such as herself could make the proper use of its resources.

But after a brief pause—as if the person had been scanning the room—the footsteps grew louder, more distinct. A few moments later, a shadow fell over Lute’s table, and she cast a short glare up at whoever dared to disturb her studies.

“Heya, cutie,” the newcomer said. It was a girl – pink hair and a striking smile that spread all the way to her eyes. “What’cha reading?”

Lute recognised her, of course. She had familiarised herself with all the heroes in the Order so as to ensure her continued superiority among their ranks, researching their habits and talents—or more usually lack thereof—down to the smallest detail. This was Soleil: a shameless flirt with eyes for men and women alike.

For someone like Lute, who took to her studies with all the devotion expected of a prodigy, people like Soleil were enigmas. How could one wile away the hours with such meaningless pursuits when there was so much to learn?

“Go away,” Lute said, turning back to her book. “I’m studying.”

“Is that right?” Soleil grinned. “It’s just, I could’ve sworn…”

She swiped a book from the top of the pile, beaming with recognition at the cover.

“Hehe! Knew it! _Birds of a Feather_ – it’s from that Tellius place, right? Oh, I’ve read it so many times… The final scene always gets my heart racing! There’s just something so cute about the romance of two women from hostile tribes! They wanna be together so bad, but they can’t, y’know? And they way they overcome it all – ah, it’s so adorable!”

“Adorable…?”

Lute glanced at her notes. A fascinating reaction, if not incredibly childish. She’d considered love in terms of happiness and lust, but the aspect of adoration—of finding love, whether one’s own or love witnessed between others, _adorable_ —was a new one to her. The word itself was banal, and it upset the dignity of her writing, but the notion…

Perhaps there were more factors to consider.

Soleil noticed the papers, casting a curious eye over them. “You’re Lute, right? Lute the prodigy? Lute the super-duper talented mage?”

“Genius mage extraordinaire, if you will; but yes,” Lute replied.

“So, then – all those notes you’ve got… You mean these books really _are_ for studying? Not, y’know… for ‘fun’?”

“Fun?” Lute asked, staring blankly at her. “Hardly. This is a matter of academic research – to understand the concept of love. Most subjects come naturally to someone with my peerless aptitude, but this subject is more… complex.”

She sighed.

“Love is utterly illogical. It follows no evident pattern or definition. It drives people forward, yet it can also drive them mad. It can be comic; it can be tragic. It may play out across a lifetime, or within five minutes of conversation between strangers. It exists as a contradiction.”

“Erm… I dunno,” Soleil smiled. “I find it pretty easy. I mean, you like someone, you tell ‘em. If they like you back, you’re together; if not, you move on. Makes sense to me!”

“Such a simplistic approach could hardly be expected from one of my intellect. I cannot hope to understand love if I only consider its most common manifestations. I must study the _theory_ behind it. For example, take you and me. We met as strangers. If I were to suddenly find you attractive, what would be the basis of that attraction? Is it in the immediate first impressions? Your face? Your figure?”

Soleil’s smile became a grin. “Are you saying you find me attractive?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m simply constructing an example. In any case, I hardly know you. Logically, the brain should resist attraction to unknown elements, given that a lack of information about said elements renders them an unknown quantity. An unknown quantity, to the subconscious mind, is a risk; and a risk endangers the need to survive, and by extension the safety of all future offspring. Yet the brain still perceives you as attractive, even disregarding the inherent need for further information in order to form rational thought. Why should it put itself at such risk? What does it have to gain?”

“I still think it’s because you find me attractive,” Soleil said, grin holding steady. “See? Love’s easy.”

“You’re missing the point. It’s not that I find you unattractive; it’s that I’m trying to understand the process by which I find you attractive. I’m considering the mental process, not any conscious opinion I might hold.” Then, feeling a strange rush inside her, Lute quickly added: “And besides which – this is still only a hypothetical discussion. I’m not saying I actually find you attractive; only that, if I were to find you attractive, the reasons for doing so would be of academic—”

Soleil gently pushed Lute’s open journal and novel to one side, sitting down on the table in front of her with one leg hooked alluringly over the other. Lute stared at her passively, showing no reaction – though she had to admit that the position held a certain allure.

But what was it that created such an impression? Logically speaking, it was nothing more than a woman sitting on a table. The key, perhaps, was not the woman or the table, but rather the attitude and the aura: the slight sway of her leg, her half-lidded eyes, the playful smile on her lips.

How intriguing. There were so many subtleties in play that even Soleil—a prodigy at love, perhaps, but lacking in Lute’s gift for insight and reasoning—couldn’t have been aware of them all. To read about flirting and seduction was one thing, but to see it in action enabled a much deeper understanding than the written word.

“Y’know what I think, cutie?” Soleil said, winking. “I think you should just put all those complicated thoughts aside for a little while and go with your heart.”

“My heart? My heart is just an organ pumping blood around my body. Feelings of excitement, such as those ascribed to love, generally correlate to an increase in blood flow, but the heart itself has no bearing on attraction or love by itself. The brain, as with all things, carries that responsibility; and so it’s my brain I’ll trust when assessing my own feelings.”

Soleil’s smile held, brushing her hair from her face. “That so? Well, then, Miss Prodigy… Maybe you’d like to come test out all your fancy-schmancy theories with me. We could go get a cup of tea, walk around town… do other stuff. See if your brain really does know best.”

Lute was about to give her a short, sharp answer – but then a thought struck her.

For all the time she’d spent pouring through these novels, she’d started to realise that the answers she was looking for—a proper understanding of love—were going to be difficult to grasp simply by reviewing the idealised nonsense found in literature. Real world experience would have to come eventually. She needed a test subject – or, as they seemed to be called in the world of love, a ‘partner’.

By all accounts, Soleil was the perfect candidate. She was genuine in her fondness for the people she flirted with, unlike some of the more insufferable heroes, but also loved flirting too much to ever let herself be tied down in a long-term relationship: ideal for someone like Lute who desired only a brief experience for the purposes of collecting valuable data. Given her rates of success in asking out people on dates, which Lute calculated from prior chance observations around the castle to sit at roughly 82.3%, she must have been something of a prodigy herself – though only to the extent of love, of course.

And moreover, she was offering herself to Lute willingly.

A superior scholar made use of all her available resources. Were she to take Soleil up on her offer—to play the part of a lovestruck fool—then she could directly observe the effects of love on an individual and compare it to the experiences depicted in literature. The insights she’d gained from her flirting alone were already stirring new ideas, new hypotheses. If such a pace were sustained…

Yes. It would be a worthy experiment.

Lute sat up, crossing her arms and studying Soleil with a neutral expression.

“Very well,” she said. “I suppose some field work _would_ provide a considerable amount of useful information. Then the experiment will proceed thus: you’ll take me out on this date of yours, and I’ll draw insightful conclusions based on the experiences you provide me. I hope you won’t disappoint.”

Soleil’s smile widened, and she stood to her feet.

“Alright! You’re not gonna regret this, cutie. I’ll make sure it’s a date to remember!”

“Then let’s be off. I’d like to gather findings at the earliest opportunity.”

Soleil’s fingers linked around Lute’s, drawing her to her feet, and the pink-haired girl giggled with a wink.

“Just follow me, then. We’re gonna have so much fun together – you’ll see!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I can't help but feel there's something a little meta about all this...


	2. Experimentation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lute discovers a few things about love -- and even more about Soleil.

Lute had never visited the town of Eifsbjorg before. She’d read all about it, of course; it was only natural that a genius of her intellect should have acquainted herself with all the settlements of Askr and beyond, and given the inclination she could pinpoint and name each and every one of them on a map while blindfolded. She knew that it was only a short carriage ride’s distance down the Leirhofn Trail, surrounded by forested hills and nestled in a shallow valley, just as she knew that the imagery of the Askr royal family’s castle as seen from the town, its silver towers overlooking it from the high hills just as they overlooked the rest of Askr, was a frequent motif in the kingdom’s art and writing. She knew, also, that it was a centre for both culture and trade in equal measure – Niflese and Askran merchants bartered freely with travellers from Múspell and beyond, while poets and singers drew crowds on street corners and painters gazed out into the mountains in search of their next masterpieces.

Yes, she knew so very much about it. Her inclination to pay it a visit, however, had never been particularly strong. Art and poetry, like love, were matters of emotion and the soul, and as such usually mattered very little to Lute. They wouldn’t help her in her magical studies, and the ‘escape’ they provided was hardly necessary when she was perfectly content to study the world she already found herself in.

But now that she found herself here, she couldn’t deny that there was a certain charm to the place. The cobblestones were swept clean of dust and dirt, making some of the towns in Renais look positively wretched by comparison, and through the café window she could watch the crowds bustling along the street. There were tourists and merchants, artists and travellers, young and old; a steady flow of daily life that she found oddly entrancing to watch.

It was a welcome distraction from the refreshments in front of her – the tea that tasted fine but was nothing special, the pastry with a sawdust consistency, and the chocolate that was all too average. She couldn’t say she particularly liked any of them, even though none of them seemed to have any significant faults. The chemical balance of flavours when consumed together, at the very least, was acceptable. Perhaps that was the problem – nothing about it challenged or surprised her. If a date in a café was intended to induce feelings of love or intimacy in an individual, then such paltry things as the drinks provided here would hardly suffice. The only emotions they were likely to invoke would be frustration at their mediocrity.

“So – what d’you think?”

Soleil’s voice broke her out of her thoughts. For all the enthusiasm Lute had approached the experiment with, she’d hardly shared a word with the girl smiling opposite her. To continue on in silence, she supposed, would have been detrimental to the intended objective of learning about love.

“This café seems adequate,” she said, sipping her drink only because it seemed the expected thing to do. “However, the leaves in this tea are entirely second-rate. As I understand, Askran tea is best prepared with starbrook leaves – they were listed in _A Hero’s Primer on Zenith Medicines,_ page 354, paragraph 2. Their high concentrations of antioxidants allow for a more calming effect, assuming the water is boiled between a temperature of 60 to 70 degrees. Anything outside that optimum temperature, however, either brings out too little of their flavour or breaks it down entirely.”

Soleil stared at her, tea in her hands, as if trying to give the impression of comprehension. But Lute was hardly offended that it seemed to go in one ear and out the other. Anyone without her degree of profound genius would, of course, find the thought processes involved to be impenetrable. It was enough for the purposes of her experiment that Soleil simply had the capacity to understand her words and formulate coherent responses.

A date, after all, necessitated a semi-regular back-and-forth conversation – without it, the ritual was devoid of any meaning. Even the most pornographic literature understood that a relationship had to be established on at least a superficial level—a suggestion of love, a justification for the content the readers had _actually_ picked up the book for—before proceeding to the main event. To do otherwise, shunning love entirely in favour of untampered lust, would invariably seem contrived: love had to be built up gradually through dialogue. Such was its power that it couldn’t be ignored.

“Y’know,” Soleil giggled, quite unexpectedly, “my mom’s really into tea-brewing too. Whenever she came to visit me while I was growing up, she’d always talk just like that – go over temperatures, leaves, blends, the lot. It’s sweet hearing you be as passionate as she was about it.”

Lute raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t anticipated such an enthusiastic response.

“Is that so…? Intriguing. I was only testing the extent to which discussing personal interests during an intimate date might detract from the mood. My research suggested that it would result in favourable responses around just 22% of the time. Otherwise, it indicated that the date was lacking direction.”

Soleil winked, resting her head in her palm. “Maybe I just like hearing you talk, cutie.”

“Ah… I see.”

Lute looked down into her teacup, staring at her face in its shimmering reflection.

There was a curious feeling: a movement of blood into her cheeks in response to an unfamiliar stimulus. It could have been the pressure of Soleil’s foot against hers under the table, causing an awareness of their intimacy, or it could have been the sound of her voice; the delicate tone that Lute understood aroused certain sensations in the human ear.

Interesting. Blushing in literature usually preceded a further development of love. If the models of fiction, dubious as they were, held up to reality, then it was possible that the experiment might bear fruit at a much faster rate than predicted…

She took another sip of the tea. All things considered, she supposed it wasn’t terrible. From a tactical perspective, it was probably for the best that starbrook leaves, antioxidant as they were, weren’t being wasted on needless luxuries in times of war. And the atmosphere in this café—the afternoon light filtering through the window, the quiet chatter, the clattering of cups—certainly wasn’t… unpleasant.

An optimum environment, perhaps.

“So,” she asked Soleil, “what might be the purpose of visiting a place like this on a date? Is it simply for getting to know one’s partner, or is it to foster a romantic atmosphere?”

“Depends on the date!” Soleil beamed. “Really, it’s just having a nice quiet place to talk about stuff and have fun with each other.”

“’Have fun with each other’? I wasn’t aware that a public venue was the expected location for sexual—”

“No, no, not like that!” Soleil said, laughing. “What I mean is, a date’s just about spending time with someone you like spending time with! Sure… _that_ kind of fun stuff can come later. But the getting-to-know part? That can be anywhere. The park, the beach…”

“Ah, yes. I’ve tried the beach. However, all I gained from the experience was the understanding that swimsuits provide no quantifiable impact on one’s abilities – be they physical or magical.”

Soleil frowned, but even her frowns held a playful element to them. “Aww. You didn’t like it?”

“Not particularly. The sand found its way into my sandals, the sun made me sleepy, and all the noise made any meaningful study impossible.”

“You don’t have to study _all_ the time, y’know?” Soleil said, and she was smiling again. “It’s good to just go and enjoy yourself for a change! Smile a bit! Life’s too short to understand everything that’s going on.”

“Knowledge is part of a satisfactory life,” Lute replied, not understanding Soleil’s point in the slightest. “If one can understand the world, one can live comfortably within it. For example, an understanding of ‘love’ as a basic concept, in spite of my present curiosity with it, is a largely superficial and unimportant pursuit. Such knowledge would provide little for my magical studies. However, an understanding of the logical basis for love, or how feelings for another are cultivated in the brain and why, would be of immense value in multiple fields of research. If I can see it in person—experience it, even—I can use that experience to better understand that logic behind it.”

“Hm… I guess you’ve got a point. I mean, if we understand the sad things in the world, it helps us appreciate the happy stuff all the more, right?”

“Well, I would formulate it a little differently, but… yes.”

Soleil’s smile grew.

Her smile was… well, it was nice. That was to say – the muscles in her face tensed in such a way that it created an immediately pleasing visual stimuli. A higher concentration of pigments in her cheeks, coupled with the skin’s natural elasticity, produced a curious reaction within Lute’s brain. On a scale of 1 to 48, the feeling was comparable to a 21.

A smile, however, was merely a gesture used to express friendliness. It meant nothing beyond that.

So why was Lute feeling warm inside? What process had caused a brain as superior as hers to determine that this girl’s smile was “nice”?

Perhaps the chemicals in her brain had been disrupted by her chaotic method of studying over the past few weeks, which had involved sleep deprivation and over-stimulation to accelerate the learning process. Or perhaps the theory of attraction—in this case, the brain producing positive feelings towards another person—was a debilitating effect, lowering the brain’s capacity to produce logical and rational thought.

Or perhaps she was just tired of being alone.

Soleil’s hands touched hers across the table, squeezing softly. The girl’s thumbs gently caressed the back of her right hand, causing a cascade of new reactions within Lute: a shortness of breath, a tightness in her chest, a dryness in her mouth…

She could think of no rational cause for these reactions. Sitting as she was, she was hardly exerting herself, and the drink had kept her body hydrated enough that a dry mouth was unlikely. The shortness of breath and tightness in her chest might have been caused by a minor effect on her lungs such as a cold – but no, they couldn’t have been. These sensations were much too powerful for such a weak stimulus. This wasn't simply emotion bypassing logic; this was a physical reaction that was beyond her control.

The answer was obvious. It was love. But how could that be? She barely knew this girl, and yet…

She didn’t know. She didn’t know _why_ her feelings were the way they were. It confounded her. Infuriated her. She was a prodigy – a genius among geniuses! So why couldn’t she understand…?

And when had Soleil moved so close?

A high sound—a giggle—mingled with the smell of perfume, the sound of breathing. Biologically, the sensations were of no relation to one another. But all the same, they somehow worked in tandem to foster a sense of intimacy – an array of factors conductive to closeness, an environment ripe for connection.

How? How could an emotional response be derived from such disparate elements? What made these things come together? Was it a logical, efficient process of the brain? A systematic reaction of the mind?

Or was it the unidentifiable, undefinable process of love?

Then Soleil touched her face and pulled her into a kiss, and all of Lute’s thoughts vanished.

All rational thought ceased to be. She wasn’t thinking; only experiencing. The sweet taste of another’s lips on hers was an unknown feeling, and one she had never cared to try. But now that she was discovering it, she felt a desire for it—a need.

There was no need for analysis. She liked it. It was a nice feeling. A warm feeling. A safe, comfortable feeling. The brain’s processes held as little importance to her in that moment as the chemistry of kissing did. The feeling was enough.

Lacking any knowledge of what to do, she followed her instincts. As Soleil’s lips started to draw away, she met them with her own, renewing the kiss with an even greater energy. Soleil happily obliged, and the single kiss quickly became a series of short, quick touches, each of them taking turns to show affection to the other, to push deeper, to go further. Lute’s brain was failing her; it refused to obey reason, and instead did as it pleased.

The logical part of her, desperate to maintain control, cycled through her studies on the role of kissing – an act typically used to express affection. But what exactly was affection? What was she sharing with Soleil? Why did she feel this way?

The logical part of her was at a loss for words. And in the absence of words, emotions took control.

Soleil giggled, breaking the kisses to stare into her eyes.

“Y’know, Lute… You’re really good at this.”

She found herself blushing. “I have… little experience.”

“Could’ve fooled me. You’re nailing it!”

Why was Lute being modest? Gifted as she was, she was well-accustomed to mastering any art within minutes. An activity as simple as putting one’s lips against another’s could hardly present a challenge to her.

No, she wasn’t being modest. That would have been absurd. She had simply been too focused on the moment to give it much thought.

But for some reason, she could only muster a breathless “Thank you” before their kissing resumed. Her hand found Soleil’s again, and their fingers intertwined.

The logical part of her, as if suddenly surfacing from a body of water to gasp for air, noted that this was an action done of her own intent – a conscious decision, a motor response sent from the brain and communicated down her body into her fingers, an instruction to grab Soleil’s hand. She didn’t know why she’d done it. There was no inherent benefit to holding hands. It didn’t help her to kiss Soleil any more efficiently, nor did it communicate anything that their lips weren’t already more capable of expressing.

But it felt nice.

Nice. Nice. Nice. Such a trite, meaningless word that served no academic purpose; that was far beneath a genius of her superior intellect. And yet nothing else could suffice. This holding of Soleil’s hand was neither logical nor illogical. It was just nice.

Nice.

An emotion. A feeling of contentment.

As the kisses drew out a soft moan from Lute, another giggle escaped Soleil’s lips.

“You’re so cute, Lute. Ooh… cute Lute. That rhymes, doesn’t it…? Maybe I’ll call you Cutie Lutie!”

“Please don’t. It’s utterly mortifying.”

Soleil grinned into their kiss. “Too late, it’s already stuck. It’s your fault for being such a cutie, Lutie.”

Lute felt her cheeks grow even warmer. A sweet warmth penetrated her chest – and with it, the last of her logical defences crumbled.

“Fine,” she murmured, kissing Soleil again. “If pet names contribute to the intimacy and affection necessary for this experiment, then… I shall allow you to address me as whatever silly thing you wish.”

Soleil smiled. “I knew you’d understand.”

With one final kiss, she drew back into her chair, and Lute was once again aware that they were in a café, surrounded by people and noise and activity. She’d lost track of place and time, forgotten her sense of self.

She felt strangely cold. Of course, when an excess of body heat such as Soleil’s was applied to one’s own body and was then removed, there would always be a resulting drop in body temperature. Even a child knew that. The dynamics of temperature and the rates of thermal energy transfer were among the many subjects Lute had long since internalized.

But she didn’t feel cold in a thermal sense, exactly. Rather, it was an emotional coldness. Emotion, once again, defied the rational, biological processes that could be quantified with data and therefore understood. A drop in body temperature could be explained. A feeling of emptiness—of removal from happiness—was an elusive, vague concept.

“So,” Soleil said, “that was your first kiss, right? How was it?”

Lute stared at her for a moment, trying to find the right words.

“Yes… Well… While not unpleasant by any means, I can see that kissing induces a state of mental incoherence,” she said at last. “The brain, acting upon emotion over logic, shifts blood flow from the cerebral region to—”

“You’re saying a lot,” Soleil grinned, “but what you’re really saying is ‘I like kissing’.”

Lute couldn’t help but look away.

“I… suppose I did. Though I can’t understand why. It stands to reason that any experience which should deprive the body of its important mental processes cannot be considered logical or even beneficial to one’s well-being. To a scholar, it risks one’s complete undoing. And yet…”

“Wanna go again?”

Soleil’s fingers were still wrapped around hers. It was an appealing thought – purely for the purposes of gathering data, of course. Making observations required testing hypotheses via experiments, and experiments had to be repeated—often more than once—to ensure that the data was accurate. Would a second round of kissing induce the same rejection of logic and reason with the same degree of intensity? If not, what variables had contributed to the initial outcome, and what had changed?

It would have been better, following that train of thought, to wait some time. In her current heightened emotional state, any data gathered from subsequent rounds could have been confused by external influences. In this case, then, ‘time’ could be used as a variable – the time between intimacy, for instance, to which one could refer back to when evaluating the extent to which longing increased the passion driving the act, or in other words the potency of—

“Heya? Cutie Lutie? You alive in there?”

“What?” Lute blinked. “Oh, yes. Apologies.”

“You were off in la-la land, weren’t you. Which means… you must’ve been thinking about kissing me! Am I right, or am I _so_ right?”

“You’re dangerously perceptive. Yes – to be exact, I was considering the experiment.” She paused, mulling over her words. “I believe a second round of kissing at this stage would be… detrimental to its results. The brain requires time to recover from any given activity.”

There was a glint in Soleil’s eye. “So you _do_ wanna go again… eventually?”

Lute looked down at her tea. It had gone cold by now, but the stillness of the liquid was somehow appealing.

“In time, yes,” she said. “Any experiment bears repeating to ensure that the same results are achieved. Unreliable results are useless in any thesis.”

She slid the cup to one side, looking Soleil in the eyes.

“For now, though, it’d be a more efficient use of our time to continue this date elsewhere. You mentioned walking around town, yes? While I can’t see how walking bears any relation to love or intimacy, romantic literature often employs it for the purposes of character development, which roughly correlates to romantic development in a real-world setting. That being the case, let us go for a walk. We can hold hands, yes? I'd like to take the opportunity to get to know you better… for research purposes.”

“Oh, Lutie,” Soleil exclaimed, wearing her widest smile yet. “You’re my kinda girl! C’mon – I’ll show you around! There’s some shops that sell the most adorable stuff!”

With that, Soleil grabbed Lute’s hand and lead her out of the café, still grinning from ear to ear.

* * *

The streets of Eifsbjorg were, Lute had to admit, very picturesque. Perhaps the emotions rushing through her head had coloured her perception of the town, but it was only natural to appreciate the finer details when Soleil, dragging her along by the hand, was taking such joy in pointing out anything and everything that caught her eye: the performers drawing crowds; the colourful goods on display in the market stalls; even the statue of Líf, the first king of Askr, around which the town seemed to have been built.

Lute was content to listen to Soleil’s enthusiastic running commentary, rambling and coherent as it often was. While a book would have been infinitely more informative, concise, and accurate, Soleil’s childish delight at displaying her knowledge held a certain… appeal. She could remember a time when she’d been like that, too – her days growing up with her grandmother in the Za’ha Woods, when every bit of knowledge gained had been cause for happiness.

She’d lost that feeling somewhere along the way. When one was a prodigy without equal, the thrill of learning and discovery grew mundane. Knowledge wasn’t to be celebrated – it simply _was_. Even the most intriguing of subjects, once analysed to their core, could only hold her attention for so long. Ultimately, each discovery was just another thing to check off a mental list, to be put aside and left to gather dust as soon as it was mastered. She took more pride in the superiority such knowledge gave her over others than she found joy in the knowledge itself.

But learning about love had been different. It was a distraction, yes: a concept that contributed nothing to one’s power or intelligence, that distracted from logic and indulged in emotion, that was fundamentally nothing more than a chemical reaction brought about by erratic hormones and base instincts. But it had nevertheless piqued her curiosity in a way that most subjects never could. Perhaps the very nature of its intangibility made it so appealing: it resisted any single definition, instead being an ever-shifting combination of various attitudes and emotions.

It was fascinating – fascinating in a way that even magic struggled to be. The very thought seemed sacrilege to her; yet this date, taken up only to further her research, had actually succeeded in capturing her interest.

Her hand rose to the band around her neck. Her grandmother had given it to her as a gift when she was young – the very same day she’d received her first spellbook.

She’d felt such excitement back then. It had marked the start of her journey to greatness; a time when the whole of Magvel and beyond had still been hers to discover.

And now she’d found her way back to that feeling.

“Ooh, that looks cute!” Soleil said, pointing at a dress through a shop window. “I wonder if they sell that in my size!”

Lute looked over the dress: light pink, sleeveless, and knee-length. Certainly, the colour made for a pleasing match with Soleil’s hair, though Lute had never concerned herself with the intricacies of fashion. The very concept was little more than a means of establishing one’s position in an abstract social hierarchy, yet it fluctuated so frequently in an ebb of flow of ‘styles’ and ‘trends’ that any resulting hierarchies would be transitory at best – and therefore meaningless to a genius such as herself. She had always been above such fads; known that she was superior to all, but especially to those would judge her based on appearance.

She could, of course, also appreciate the aesthetics of a thing without needing to define its purpose or value in relation to her own needs. Provided Soleil were the one wearing the dress, it might have positively contributed to her appeal, even if such vanity seemed unnecessary when Soleil herself was already quite pleasing to the senses.

Then again, Lute’s own dress sense was founded in practical concerns: a mage’s robe, a cloak for the cold, and comfortable shoes that made long periods of studying easier. To render any kind of judgement on the dress would have been to view it through her own sensibilities, and it wasn’t for her to decide whether or not Soleil should wear the dress so long as it made her happy.

Happiness. Specifically, a desire for Soleil’s happiness. Was that a consideration born of love, or a mere side product?

They continued along the street. Soleil had insisted on linking arms with Lute, but she didn’t mind. Physical demonstrations of affection seemed to play an important role in fostering love between two individuals, and she was more than willing to comply if it meant furthering her research. After all, the only way to properly study love was to go through with it all the way and experience everything it had to offer.

Naturally, to go ‘all the way’ with love would necessitate a more intimate experiment that night. But for reasons not entirely bound by logic, the thought of it sent a curious anticipation through Lute – that of an academic on the verge of a major discovery.

How peculiar that she should be finding the prospect of such things fascinating rather than repulsive, especially given how she had felt towards the subject only a few short weeks ago. Love truly was an intriguing phenomenon.

“Hey, Lutie!” Soleil said, tugging at her arm. “Look at this one!”

Soleil drew Lute’s attention to a run-down, wooden store. While unappealing on a purely aesthetic level, it had a charm Lute couldn’t help but associate with the familiar shacks of the Za’ha Woods; the vernacular architecture of people who had thrown their lot in with the wilderness – or, failing that, simply cared little for fitting in with their urbanised peers.

A magic store, she realised. A den of wonders. While libraries were a much more reliable source of magic and learning, the feeling of wandering around a shop like this, casting her eyes over all the wondrous things on the shelves, was an experience books couldn’t replace. It was nostalgic, really – something she’d once enjoyed but had since fallen out of touch with in favour of the Order’s endless collection of tomes.

“C’mon,” Soleil grinned. “You know you wanna.”

She was right. Lute did want to go in. She couldn’t wait to go in.

Walking into the store was like stepping into an old memory. The shelves were tall, packed with all manner of bottles, jars, and vials of all colours and sizes; and staves, books, tinctures, amulets, and more were all crammed among them with little regard for order or categorisation. Even the smells were the same: dust, incense, and the odours of all manner of herbs and ingredients that had long since gone to seed.

This was the magic she’d fallen in love with. Not the type of love she was studying now, but a different sort of love. The exploratory, experimental kind. A love for testing out all these wonderful and fascinating items; for learning what they did and how they did it; for discovering the infinite possibilities open to her.

A time before studying, or academia, or realising she was a prodigy. A time when magic was something to be enjoyed rather than a riddle to be deciphered.

“This place brings back memories,” she said.

“Hehe. Figured it might.” Soleil stepped further into the shop, scanning her eyes over the shelves. “So, anything catch your fancy?”

Lute didn’t answer; she was too captivated by all the sights and smells to form a response. She studied the shelves, mouth slightly agape as if she were a child again. So many different things to learn, to try…

“Hey, Lutie.” Soleil’s voice snapped her back to reality. “Look at this.”

Soleil was holding a brown leather journal almost identical in appearance to the one Lute had written down her notes regarding love into. It didn’t look particularly impressive – but something about it had evidently caught Soleil’s eye. Holding it out to show Lute, the girl quickly flicked through the blank pages with her thumb. She flicked, and flicked, and flicked, and…

It was still going. Where the pages should have surely run out and reached the back cover, they instead continued on and on and on – a never-ending sea of pages.

“An endless journal,” Soleil said, lifting up the loosely-attached tag and beaming at her. “Pretty cool, huh? And probably perfect for a researcher…”

“I do find myself running short of paper,” Lute admitted. “It often seems the Order is ill-prepared for the demands of an academic mind like mine. My last dissertation alone required a paltry sum of one thousand and fifty-seven pages of parchment, and I was forced to dwell for a week on my unwritten ideas two-thirds of the way to completion until they could supply me with more…”

“W-wow, no kidding…? Then all the better, in that case…”

Soleil paused, as if thinking for a moment – then her smile grew.

“Wait here,” she said.

Lute watched as she skipped around to the shop’s counter—attended, she realised, by a quiet old man with a long grey beard who had blended right in with all the dusty artefacts—and pushed the journal across. There was a brief exchange, a rustling of coins; and then Soleil was back in front of Lute with the journal in hand. She held it out.

“Here,” she said cheerfully. “It’s yours.”

Lute stared at her for a long moment. She had heard—indeed, often observed in her reading—that the role of shopping in a date, by all accounts, was more a test than a genuine pleasure. The aim was to draw out displays of affection by purchasing gifts for one’s partner and thereby subtly pushing them to do likewise: an unspoken test of generosity and devotion to the other. In such exchanges, the initial gift was usually something clichéd and uninspired—a box of chocolates or a bouquet of flowers—to encourage a more thoughtful response from the partner.

Soleil had bought her a journal. Following the typical literary model of romance, it was as mundane a gift as she could have been offered.

But it was unmistakably, unimaginably thoughtful.

“This… You’re giving this to… me?”

Soleil grinned. “Who else, cutie? I figure if you’re never gonna stop studying the world, then you’d better have a journal that’ll let you do it as long as you want. Light as a feather, too, so you’ll barely even know it’s there!”

Lute slowly took it from her, staring down at it.

“I… I’m not sure what to say. To buy me a gift of such practical value… Soleil, I…”

Lute couldn’t find the proper words to respond. Such a meaningful gift had fallen well out of the expected parameters for someone like Soleil. She had taken the girl for a charming philanderer, a cheery but ultimately shallow flirt. Yes, she’d made for a suitable test subject, a woman Lute could allow herself to briefly fall in love with for the purposes of research – but that had been all.

She hadn’t taken her for a woman of such… depth and sincerity.

“Thank you,” she said finally.

Soleil’s smile broadened. “No problem. Gotta look after my Cutie Lutie, right?”

The two of them left the shop, stepping out into the late afternoon streets. Lute held the journal in her hand, gaze fixed on it. as if in a trance. Soleil laid a hand on her shoulder, gently tugging her back to reality.

“Hey,” she said softly, “everything okay?”

Lute nodded. “Yes. It’s just…”

She swallowed. If this really was a ploy on Soleil’s part to receive a gift in return, then it had been remarkably well-executed – a testament to the devious games involved in love.

“If I understand correctly,” Lute said, “then love is a concept founded on equal treatment – save for those curious novels where one partner derives pleasure from submitting to the other. A fair trade is only logical.” She looked up, scanning the streets. “That pink dress from earlier will fulfil those requirements perfectly, yes? Let’s go and buy it.”

“That dress? Nah. It’s pretty, sure, but I can think of something even prettier.”

Lute raised an eyebrow. So, Soleil _had_ been planning for this. She already had her eye on something. That fell more in line with the expected—

“Smile for me, cutie.”

Lute blinked.

“Smile…?”

“Sure! A smile’s only a facial expression. It costs nothing, but it makes people happier. The happier people are, the better!”

“But…”

Lute’s mind raced, grasping for strands of logic that didn’t exist.

“But I don’t understand,” she said. “In an equivalent trade, it stands to reason that the gift given in return should be of a proportionally equivalent value. A smile holds neither material nor monetary value. And besides, how can you quantify the worth of something that only exists for mere moments?”

“Some things are worth more than money, Cutie Lutie. So c’mon – smile!”

Lute looked at Soleil in silence.

Certainly, a smile in itself wasn’t a complicated act. The brain sent a signal to the facial muscles to contract, raising the corners of the lips and causing wrinkles to form at the corners of the eyes as a show of happiness. Being a natural prodigy, Lute had never had any trouble smiling. Rather, she’d simply never had the inclination. Smiling was for moments of immense self-discovery and self-satisfaction, and she already knew that she was a genius. And it was preposterous to think that a smile could hold more worth to someone than a material gift.

But she thought of the journal in her hands, so simple but so thoughtful. She thought of the kiss she’d shared with her in the café; the way it’d blocked out her logical impulses and allowed her to indulge in happiness. She thought of the way Soleil, even if only for a moment, had reminded her of the joy for learning she’d lost somewhere along the way.

She smiled. A natural reaction that required no input from the brain.

There was no explosion of happiness from Soleil; no triumphant cheer at finally drawing a smile out of Lute. Instead, the girl’s own grin simply widened, and she linked their arms again.

“There we go. Does that feel so bad?”

Soleil’s movement had caused her to blush, but the smile on Lute’s lips held strong.

No. No, it didn’t feel bad at all.

But it was starting to get dark. The sky was shifting through its usual hues into the murky orange of the setting sun.

It was time to proceed with the final stage of the experiment.

The date had taught her a lot about love: about intimacy, about affection, about the soft, tender kinds of feelings she’d long since abandoned. She was close to understanding it.

But there was still one more aspect of love she needed to study – in explicit detail.

Her arm tightened around Soleil’s, squeezing gently.

“I believe it’s time we returned to the castle.”

Soleil gave her a coy, knowing smile in response.

“Sounds good to me,” she said. “Your room or mine, cutie?”


	3. Conclusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lute finally comes to an understanding about love.

Soleil’s quarters made for a garish burst of colours: an array of pinks and purples covering the bedsheets, the pillows, the chairs, even the carpet that ran under the bed. Aesthetically, Lute thought, it was a world apart from the drab and dreary castle halls. Gone were the stone floors and the towering walls; the grey, endlessly repeating corridors; the thousand nameless rooms that all looked the same and could easily have been repurposed to fill more efficient roles. That wasn’t to say the contrast was entirely pleasing – Soleil’s room was also one of muddled proportions and unorganized shelves, with clothes strewn everywhere and bizarre stuffed animals casting watchful eyes over every corner of the room.

To someone like Lute, so focused on details and order, it should have been hideous. One’s room was a direct representation of the owner’s mind, but there was no particular logic to Soleil’s room. No method to the madness. To surround oneself in clutter was to live in chaos, and to live in chaos was to surrender reason. From Lute’s reading, a bedroom—typically the culmination of the date—represented a partner revealing the innermost secrets of their heart to the other, laying themselves bare for their beloved to see. Soleil’s heart, apparently, was a messy place. A stark contrast to Lute’s methodical mind.

Yet the room clearly made perfect sense to Soleil. It was comfortable, warm, and inviting. Everything had its place, and everything had its purpose. It followed its own internal logic – not a logic consistent with the kind Lute followed, but a logic all the same. Even if Lute couldn’t comprehend it, she supposed it was enough that it made Soleil happy.

It was rather like love, really.

As she took in the room, Soleil closed the door behind her, locking it with a click. A sly smile crept onto the girl’s lips.

“So, cutie,” she said. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

“…Indeed,” Lute said, pushing down the rising heat in her chest. “This room is quite… colourful.”

“You like it?”

“Well – liking something is founded on one’s general predisposition to the elements involved… but I can see the appeal. I suppose it’s only logical to have a room that makes you happy.”

“Right!” Soleil said, her smile growing wider. “It’s pretty cute, huh? Helps me start and end every day with a smile!”

“Surroundings have been proven to affect one’s mental state, so I’d imagine that to be the case.”

Soleil giggled, then stepped closer to her. Lute noticed that her eyes seemed to glint in the light.

“But enough about the room. You ready to get started, cutie?”

“I am,” Lute said. “The final part of my experimentation requires no less than a full demonstration of the… other side of love. To that end, I’d like to observe a number of different acts and positions to form a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. I assume you have no objections taking the lead?”

Soleil grinned from ear to ear. “You mean… you want me to be in charge?”

“That’s what ‘taking the lead’ refers to, yes? Intercourse—even between two partners of the same sex, where no significant biological differences exist—typically requires that one of the pair takes a dominant role. That’s not to say that the submissive partner has no say in what happens, but rather that they allow the other to dictate the flow and pace of the experience. Thus far, our interactions have suggested to me that you’re rather more familiar in this area than I am, so it’s a perfectly sensible course of action to put you in charge of leading the experiment.”

“Heck yeah, I’m familiar!” Soleil beamed. “You just relax and leave everything to me, then. We’re gonna have so much fun…”

“I’ll be making mental notes for use in a future dissertation. As such, please show me a variety of experiences.”

Soleil’s smile broadened, and she rested her arms on Lute’s shoulders, drawing tantalizingly close. Her perfume washed over Lute – a familiar scent that recalled their moment together in the café.

Lute’s chest stirred involuntarily at the memory. Even the simple act of recollection, it seemed, could induce feelings of love. How interesting…

“Oh, Cutie Lutie…” Soleil purred, her voice like silk. “You’ve got no idea what you just signed up for.”

“I would assume nothing that wouldn’t be of benefit to my studies,” Lute said calmly.

“You sure you’re ready? You might be a little… overwhelmed.”

“Being overwhelmed is all part of the experiment. I’d be more disappointed if it triggered no measurable reaction whatsoever.”

Soleil smirked – then drew her into a kiss.

Lute’s mind immediately set to work, scrambling to make observations before the sensations of the kiss would inevitably drown out her rational thought. She noted, first of all, the differences between this kiss and the one they’d shared in the café. Where their prior kiss had been delicate—brief touches of the lips, a confession of interest—this one was charged with sexual intent. Soleil’s tongue flicked out, running gently across Lute’s lips and teasing them open, and the girl took the opportunity to slide her tongue into the opening, massaging Lute’s own with practiced ease. Their saliva intermingled in the exchange, a strange concoction that tasted only slightly less unpleasant than the café’s tea – but somehow, she wanted more. To examine.

Soleil was evidently experienced at this. If Lute was to approach the experiment with a coherent, analytical mind, then she needed to focus.

The tongue – yes, that was a consideration all of its own. While usage of the tongue seemed to be a common but unspoken element of kissing among intimate partners, Lute had observed in her reading that any explicit detail of the process was largely restricted to erotic literature. In a traditional narrative, of course, there would be no need to go into such a level of detail when a simple ‘they kissed’ would suffice; and so authors’ insistence on vividly describing a tongue-based kiss naturally implied that the addition of a tongue added a heightened sensuality and sexuality.

Biologically, the tongue served a rather mundane purpose of tasting and swallowing, but it was also a means of communication. In fact, the aforementioned erotica was more than willing to demonstrate that usage of the tongue was a commonality of human sexual activity. Perhaps the tongue didn’t simply allow for verbal communication, but for sexual expression – a demonstration of one’s feelings for a partner through raw physicality.

Just as love could be expressed through a kiss, so too could an even greater love be expressed through the addition of a tongue. An intriguing line of inquiry.

In any case, Soleil was expressing herself quite clearly through the kiss. Her arms tightened around Lute’s neck, drawing her even closer, and her hot breath flooded into Lute’s mouth.

Heat. Was there a connection with the thermal aspect of their kiss in the café, or was temperature simply a means of describing love that touched on both the physical and emotional sensations?

Eventually, Soleil broke for air, letting her tongue caress Lute’s as it slid out.

“That’s just the start, cutie,” she said. “You ready for the next step?”

“I… Yes.”

A nervous pause. That was concerning. On a scale of 1 to 48, her composure at such an early stage in the experiment should have been a 44, but instead it was slipping steadily down to a 37 and possibly even risked falling to 31 if the subsequent stimuli were as intense.

But Soleil grinned all the same, taking Lute by the hand and leading her towards the bed. As Lute reclined against a pillow—or was it a stuffed animal?—Soleil followed her down, straddling her on either side of her hips.

“Let’s get onto the good stuff, then,” Soleil said, wiggling her eyebrows. She lifted her arms up, unbuttoning her padded jacket, and began to undress.

The purpose of nudity in a sexual encounter was, of course, to facilitate physical intimacy while promoting a state of comfort and trust between partners. Nudity in and of itself held virtually no appeal to Lute: the difference between Soleil with her clothes on and with her clothes off was, to her, negligible, and the idea of exposing herself to another person in any other context struck her as both pointless and humiliating. Nevertheless, most sex acts demanded that its participants were in a state of at least partial undress; and so for the purposes of collecting data, there was little choice but to play along.

Soleil’s jacket came off, quickly followed by her gloves, boots, and pants – all tossed aside to join the other heaps of discarded clothing around the room. Left only in her undergarments, she leaned in close to Lute again, her hands playing with the blue silk of her cloak.

“Come on, cutie,” she whispered. “Why don’t you show me what’s under that dress?”

“Robe,” Lute corrected her. “Though the difference may seem negligible to the uninitiated, a robe and a dress—within the context of magical attire—are two entirely separate items of clothing. Where a dress—”

But Soleil’s fingers were already unbuckling the straps around her shoulders, and moments later both the robe and cloak slipped down her body effortlessly, exposing her purple underwear.

“Less talking, more fun,” Soleil said, her fingers interlacing with Lute’s. “You wanted a variety of experiences, yeah…?”

“For the purposes of research, yes. I’d appreciate a… a broad range of data to work with.”

“Good thing you’ve got an expert, then,” Soleil grinned, her free hand drifting down Lute’s exposed belly. “Let’s start… _here_.”

Lute generally thought of herself as a calm, rational individual. Any experiment required a certain measure of detachment to yield accurate results: to allow herself to be swayed by emotion or distractions endangered the whole process and risked producing flawed or false results. She’d always considered it better practice, therefore, to keep feelings bottled up and separated from her studies.

But when Soleil’s fingers slipped beneath her panties and traced slow, teasing circles over her folds, Lute’s composure started to crack. Her cheeks blushed scarlet, and she bit her lip to keep herself from moaning out loud. It wouldn’t have befit someone of her natural talent to have shown weakness when—

Soleil’s fingers pushed inside her with one smooth motion, and her senses melted. Her entire body shuddered, and a breathless sigh escaped her lips.

“You okay there, cutie?” Soleil whispered into her ear.

“I-I…!”

“Yeah? You feel good?”

“I-I am feeling… quite… stimulated…” Lute admitted, forcing the words out one at a time.

“You want more?”

“I want…” She grunted as Soleil shifted ever so teasingly inside her. “I want… more.”

Soleil’s fingers obliged, curling upwards and stroking against a part of her that set fire to her senses, then began to thrust in and out with a gentle motion.

It felt… nice. There was that word again. Nice.

No – no, this was a crucial stage of the experiment. ‘Nice’ was an excusable sentiment for the fluttering feeling of attraction, but now she needed to form more precise observations. She concentrated, thinking back to her research.

The act of fingering, quite unimaginatively named, was commonplace in erotic fiction, not least of all because it only required the presence of a single woman. It typically involved—as she was experiencing—the motion of a partner’s fingers in and out of the recipient’s orifices; most commonly the vagina but also more rarely the rectum and even more exotic places. To achieve arousal at the most efficient and satisfactory rate, it was typically a matter of finding the optimum location and performing rhythmic thrusts. It was, in essence, the same technique one would use for self-pleasure, but the sensation of being serviced by another lent it—

Gods, it made it feel so _good_. Lute’s entire body was rocking back and forth in time with Soleil’s fingers. Her mind was fogging over, and her thoughts were scattering as Soleil gave her a body a lesson in pleasure.

Focus. She needed to focus and arrange her thoughts in a reasonable manner.

  * The act of being serviced, contrary to my role as the submissive partner, is a paradoxical one: it puts the dominant partner, or more colloquially the ‘giver’, in an unusual position of subservience to the ‘receiver’, wherein the only pleasure the dominant partner experiences is that which they experience vicariously through the submissive partner’s reactions. This suggests, therefore, that such acts derive more from affection than lust.
  * The pleasure experienced during the process of fingering is reliant on several variables, but the most important of these are a rhythmic and consistent pace. For referential purposes, however, the other variables include the tightness of one’s orifices, the submissive partner’s level of arousal, the position and angle of finger entry, the depth of thrust, the width of thrust—



Oh, the way Soleil _moved_ , though…! With the utmost precision and concentration, her fingers curved forward at a perfect angle, sliding in and out of Lute with just the right amount of speed. The ideal speed, Lute observed, seemed to rest around an average of two or three thrusts per second, although the consistency of the motion was the most important factor of all.

“You about ready, cutie?”

Lute bit her bottom lip and nodded.

Soleil giggled, her fingers never ceasing their motions. “Aww, you’re so cute when you’re shy. Don’t worry, this’ll feel really good – I promise. Almost there…”

Soleil’s tongue stuck out between her lips as she focused, picking up the speed to an average—Lute thought, though her cognitive ability to process things was quickly leaving her—of 4.6 thrusts per second, and then…

She felt something new. There was a warmth and wetness against the opening of her body unlike anything she’d ever felt before, as if something were waiting to burst.

“Now,” Soleil whispered, “enjoy the ride.”

All at once, Lute’s brain released an excess of pleasure-causing chemicals, flooding her mind with waves of euphoria. She gasped as her body sharply reacted, and she felt a rush of liquid flowing out of her and onto Soleil’s fingers with all the force of a raging current. Her panties, still loose around her waist, had been completely soaked through, and her thighs were slick with her own juices.

“There we go!” Soleil giggled, licking her fingers clean. “I knew you could do it, cutie. You’re a natural.”

“O-of… Of course I am…”

She collapsed onto the bed. She could hardly speak. So many thoughts rushed through her mind—dozens and dozens of realisations that she wanted to catch, to note down, to study and analyse and pick apart—but they were moving too quickly to consider.

‘Climax’. A word Lute had covered time and time again in her research. Specifically, it referred to the moment of orgasm, or the height of one’s pleasure – although the literature she’d read usually dressed it in varying degrees of metaphor. Some were poetic but perplexing, like “a blossoming of love”, while others were excessively verbose, such as “the arrival of a light in her soul that penetrated the heavens”.

But the sensation itself defied definition. It was calm and excitement and satisfaction all at once.

Climax typically marked the end – but Lute wouldn’t be satisfied with only a single set of results. For the purposes of confirming her findings, she needed more.

Gods, how she needed more.

“Onto the next experience,” Soleil said, winking.

Before Lute could properly gather her thoughts, Soleil’s hands were already moving, slipping around her panties and sliding them down her legs. Lute shuddered as the cool air hit her exposed flesh – but then a very different kind of sensation took over when Soleil’s mouth engulfed her most sensitive area and began to suck.

This time, she couldn’t stifle her moan; and the sound encouraged Soleil, who began to work even faster.

Lute’s mind was slipping again. From 33 to 31, from 31 to 27… At the rate Soleil was going, her composure was barrelling towards the single digits. She needed to retreat into her thoughts; think through what was happening and process it in stages.

Cunnilingus. That was the name of this act. A more intimate variation on fingering, the exact methodology behind it was widely disagreed upon; and Lute could only assume that the authors of such works lacked the necessary world experience to form more accurate conclusions. Some literature insisted on a process of ‘eating out’ – referring not, thankfully, to erotic cannibalism, but rather licking along the folds and using the tongue in a pattern of repeated penetration as one might have used their fingers. Others, meanwhile, suggested focusing on the clitoris, the small but sensitive nub just above the folds.

Soleil clearly subscribed to the second theory. Her tongue danced circles around Lute’s clitoris, stripping away more and more of her rational thought with each careful flick, each suck and kiss.

“I…” Lute managed, “I feel… another reaction…”

“Of course you do,” Soleil giggled. “That means it’s working! You taste amazing, by the way. I could get used to this.”

Taste…? Yes – taste often came up in descriptions of cunnilingus, for one reason or another. As Lute had already established, one of the tongue’s primary functions was to discern flavour. But it seemed implausible that bodily fluids, especially those secreted a place as private as the vagina, could taste anything but unpleasant. Perhaps the intimacy of the moment caused the brain to perceive the flavour more favourably. There was certainly no plausible biological reason for such a reaction. If she collected some samples of her fluid, she could feasibly have Soleil taste them in a non-intimate setting to determine if the taste was real or merely psychosomatic.

An interesting idea for an experiment – but one that couldn’t distract Lute from the building tension in her loins. Her train of thought, once fluid and fluent, was quickly becoming a disjointed sequence of fragmented ideas and sensations that she could barely comprehend. Pleasure, delight, joy, elation – any of those words might have sufficed, but none seemed to matter as Soleil’s tongue moved with practiced precision along the length of her womanhood, slurping up the liquid dripping out of her with each lick.

All that mattered was release. She felt her body stiffen, felt the sweat building on her forehead, felt her toes curl and her fingers grip Soleil’s pink bedsheets. She moaned and whined and gasped, feeling her pride and natural superiority pale before Soleil’s expertise.

One last flick – and then she reached climax again, releasing into Soleil’s waiting mouth. The girl pulled away with a delighted smirk, wiping her lips.

“Wow, Cutie Lutie,” she said. “You come quickly, huh? That’s okay – it just means I get to see you smile more!”

She drew close, her face inches away from Lute’s.

“You ready for round three?”

Lute was shattered. She’d never felt more physically fatigued in all her life, and her mind struggled to string together a coherent thought.

But she was ready. Knowledge—the promise of knowledge, the joy of gaining knowledge—pushed her forward. She wanted to learn everything there was to learn about love – not simply for the sake of filling in her mind, but for the thrill of learning something new.

Soleil had reignited that thrill in her; reignited it, tonight, in more ways than one. And it gave her the strength to reply.

“Yes,” she managed. “Absolutely.”

Soleil smirked, and began to lean in.

“Wait,” Lute said. “I have… a request.”

Her words caught Soleil by surprise: the girl stopped, then sat back, blinking at her curiously.

Lute’s mind was of little academic use in its current state – her composure rapidly approached a 25. She took a moment to catch her breath and concentrate; then looked at Soleil with renewed energy.

“It’s something I… that I encountered during my research,” she managed. “An act that was utterly illogical in its driving psychology. I should like to try it… if for no other reason than to dismiss it as a construct of fiction.”

Soleil cocked her head, but her interest was clear.

“Sounds fun,” she grinned. “You just tell me what you want, cutie, and we’ll have a good time together.”

Lute nodded, then laid down on her knees with her bottom pointed towards Soleil.

“The act is simple. You slap me with all the force you can muster, and I attempt to derive some kind of pleasure from it.”

Soleil stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed and taken aback – then her lips curled upwards into a smile, and she drew close to Lute once again, whispering in her ear.

“I knew you’d been reading some dirty stuff… but _wow_. You’re a bona fide pervert – aren’t you, Miss Prodigy?”

“Don’t draw the wrong conclusion,” Lute said sharply. “I’m simply curious as to how this experience will affect my mental state.”

Soleil winked at her. “I know how it’ll affect your butt.”

“It’ll cause a significant amount of pain, yes. Any other conclusion would be delusional. My inquiry isn’t to see if it hurts, but rather to determine if it could ever induce a sense of enjoyment, as the book suggested. I imagine not, senseless as the concept is; but if you’d indulge me, it’d provide an interesting case study.”

Soleil giggled. “You can be pretty strange, Lutie.” She sat up, smoothing a gentle hand over Lute’s bottom. “But then that’s why you’re such a cutie.”

There was a pause – then Soleil struck out, hitting Lute’s right buttock with all her strength. It landed with a loud smack, and Lute felt the force travel through her body, jolting her nervous system.

She bit her lip to hold back a cry of pain.

“How was that?” Soleil asked with genuine concern, gently rubbing the spot she’d hit. “Too hard?”

“No,” Lute panted.

Yes. Yes, it had been too hard. Gods, it had been _unbelievably_ painful.

But if this really was a form of love, no matter how absurd, then she was determined to test it. No knowledge ever came from simply running away from an opportunity – especially when Soleil seemed willing to oblige almost any request she made.

Soleil hit her again, and this time Lute only muffled a choked-up whimper.

“Harder,” she panted.

“You sure, cutie?” Soleil asked, raising up her hand.

Lute took a deep breath, then nodded.

“As hard as you can. Every bit of data—AH!”

The next blow felt as if it’d shattered her entire body. Her hands clutched helplessly at the sheets, her mouth opened in a silent howl of pain – and yet, somewhere in her mind, an ember of pleasure had sparked to life.

It had felt good.

Good?

Ridiculous. How could pain induce pleasure? Pain was an impulse designed to prevent one from engaging in activities that would cause bodily harm. It enabled a person to pull their hand back from a fire, or to cry out when they reached the limits of their strength. The idea that some _enjoyment_ could be found in it was antithetical to the entire instinct – an utter betrayal of the body’s carefully designed logic. It defied all rationale.

Could it even be called love? Love was, on some level, the expression of affection through physical means; but how could inflicting pain ever be a demonstration of affection?

It was paradoxical. All so paradoxical. All so devoid of reason. It didn’t make any sense…!

And yet behind all the pain, Lute was feeling a strange heat.

Soleil hit her again. And again. And again, until Lute’s body was a mass of pain. She bit her lip to hold back her screams, but the feeling of sweet satisfaction in her mind was only growing stronger.

“That enough?” Soleil asked, gently rubbing her sore bottom. “You must’ve figured out if you like it by now.”

“Continue,” Lute begged. “Please.”

“You sure? Because if I hit you any harder, you’re not gonna be able to sit straight for a week.”

A horrifying prospect for an academic accustomed to spending all her time deskbound in a library. It was almost enough to make her reconsider.

But she had nearly arrived at a set of results. To stop now would be to leave her mental notes half-formed; to produce an inferior dissertation.

She also wanted release.

“Yes,” she said. “For the… experiment…”

She could almost hear Soleil smile – but then, the girl was always smiling. Soleil leaned in close, her lips brushing Lute’s ear.

“You should see how soaked you are back there,” she whispered. “I’d say it’s pretty clear that book might’ve been onto something…”

Soleil’s fingers briefly dipped down to Lute’s slit, feeling the wetness there. Lute could feel it too, between the cold air and the stinging warmth – her thighs, as if from nowhere, were freshly soaked.

Then the hand came down on her again with a stinging slap. She gritted her teeth and bore the sudden pain, and the satisfaction was turning to ecstacy.

What was it? What caused pleasure in pain?

She was familiar with the term ‘masochism’. The novel she had learned of this act from employed it as a primary focus, detailing a protagonist who found ‘love’—though Lute still questioned if love was the appropriate terminology—through the application of both physical and emotional pain from his partner. Psychologically speaking, a masochistic brain seemed to have wired itself for self-destruction: it encouraged its owner to actively seek out pain, even if only in the safety of a lover who knew their limits.

What was the driving factor? Was it to do with the dynamic of a subservient position – the willing subjection to another’s will? Could it have been derived from a subconscious desire, superior as she was, to be brought down to the level of an inferior mind? She had, after all lowered herself in a sense simply to learn about love; so was there a correlation? Or was there a natural cause? A stimulation of nerves in just the right way, for just the right amount of time, to just the right point? Could such a reaction take root in anyone, or was there a deficiency in her own brain’s logic that allowed these feelings to run free?

She could feel her mind whirring, trying to find some sort of explanation for what she was experiencing. But she couldn’t find an answer. She had nothing. It was illogical, it was insane, it was beyond all reason.

But it was real. It had been proven through her own reactions.

Soleil’s hand came down again – and Lute came along with it. She heard Soleil yelp in surprise as her fluids squirted out so suddenly, drenching the girl’s hand and body.

Lute’s body shuddered with a wild, unthinking intensity that went beyond the previous two climaxes. Her vision went white, her nerves seemed to fire in all directions at once, and her brain—

No. How could she even speak with certainty about her brain at this point? Maybe it was producing some kind of pleasure-causing chemical. Maybe it was communicating a motor response throughout her body. Maybe it had fallen out during one of the slaps and had abandoned Lute to return to the more important matters of research and learning.

Nothing made sense. She was a genius; a prodigy; a scholar without equal. Nothing made sense.

Liquid dripped down her thighs, and Soleil slurped it up with her tongue, savouring it.

“Mmm… You ready to call it there, Lutie? I can keep going, but… Well, you’ve gotta be pretty tired after something like that. Don’t work yourself _too_ hard, okay?”

Lute tried to gather her thoughts; tried to remember what had happened just a few moments ago.

“I… I don’t…”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Soleil giggled, dropping down onto a pillow.

In the haze, Lute’s thoughts slowly took form.

Love, perhaps, was founded in equal exchange.

Sometimes, that exchange didn’t follow a clear pattern of logic. Soleil had bought her a gift that might have cost a considerable amount of money, but Lute had wrongly assumed that repayment for the gift had to be something of equal material value when a simple smile had sufficed for Soleil. Yes – a smile had been enough to satisfy her, but it had still been an exchange. Happiness for happiness.

Something in exchange for something else. A financial transaction of sorts – a well-balanced, logical trade of currency. Mathematical. Quantifiable.

Were her own thoughts making sense? She couldn’t even be sure her brain was still with her. All these emotions, these distractions that dulled her mind, these feelings of love and lust and affection and everything in between – they all made her feel so foolish.

But she knew one thing. It was a thought, ill-defined, but one she could grab onto.

She wanted Soleil to feel good as well. To receive something in exchange.

That was a part of love. Fairness and equality.

She sat up. Soleil had been right – she was positively stinging down below. Soleil glanced at her from the pillow, clearly surprised to see her still moving.

“Hey… You feeling okay?”

What was ‘okay’, really? A feeling of comfort? Of contentment? Of satisfaction?

She was comfortable with Soleil.

She was content with her.

She was satisfied with her; satisfied by her.

Following those criteria, the answer was clear.

“Yes,” she said. “Shaken, somewhat, but… stable. It seems I’m still alive – and with rather fascinating results to ponder, as well. I’d underestimated the catalytic properties such experiences could have on the human body. Literature is often fond of embellishment for the pleasure of its readers, but… in this instance, reality doesn’t disappoint.”

“So,” Soleil grinned, “what you’re really saying is, ‘damn, Soleil, that felt _good_ ’ – right?”

“I…” Lute faltered. “Yes. It felt… good.”

“Aw, cutie. You see? Love’s not so hard. You just have to enjoy yourself! You can analyse it all you like, but at the end of the day, everything’ll turn out hunky-dory so long as it makes you happy!”

Lute sighed. After all these weeks of research, could it really be so simple?

She turned to Soleil.

“I’m not quite done. I’d like to give you something in exchange.”

Soleil quirked an eyebrow – and Lute concentrated, focusing on a simple incantation that could draw magic together into an imagined physical form.

Moments later, a translucent, phallic object materialised in her hands. Soleil looked on, astounded, though it was only natural that a genius should have been able to form such a basic shape.

“Is…” Soleil murmured. “Is that a…”

“I believe it’s referred to as a ‘dildo’. The purpose of it is to simulate the feeling of the male genitalia when inserted into one’s—”

“I-I know what it _is_ …! I just… Wow. It’s pretty, er… large…”

“My research led me to believe that a larger size is generally considered more pleasurable in the long term. Should you have any objections, however, the design can be effortlessly modified.”

“N-no, no, it’s perfect!” Soleil laughed. “It looks like it was made for me!”

Lute tilted her head, slightly confused. “Well… yes. It was.”

She moved closer to Soleil, and the girl sat up against the end of the bed, coyly spreading her legs. She tugged at her black panties, slipping them down her legs and throwing them to one side, and Lute knelt in front of her, easing the tip of the magical dildo against Soleil’s bright pink opening.

“I believe the technical term for this act is ‘penetration’. Naturally, this toy’s magical nature increases the number of nerves stimulated, thus maximizing the number of orgasms possible during a given act. My research claimed three, but I calculate that with sufficient effort, a figure up to—”

“Lute, just put it in.”

Lute sighed.

“…As you wish.”

She gently pushed the dildo into Soleil’s opening, carefully watching her expression. As she eased it in and out, Soleil’s eyes began to flutter, and she moaned softly. She arched her back, and the dildo moved deeper inside of her, soon disappearing almost entirely as Soleil’s breath quickened. Her sighs grew louder, and her arms tightened around Lute, pulling her closer as if to hold on.

“It… It’s so big…” she gasped.

“That was generally the phrase used in my reading, yes,” Lute explained, feeling her own arousal grow as the dildo slid in and out of Soleil’s wet hole. “But the length and girth can be adjusted.”

Between Soleil’s moans, Lute observed a glint in her eye.

“Then make it longer,” Soleil said.

“Longer?”

“Yeah. So you can push it into yourself as well, cutie. I wanna see you smile again…”

Another smile…?

Lute paused. Soleil, like love, was utterly incomprehensible. Even as she was being pleasured, even rewarded, her mind was only on seeing her partner be happy.

What a strange, silly girl.

“…Of course,” she said. “Simply increasing the length is no problem for someone of my talent.”

She focused for a moment, and the dildo nearly doubled in length, extending out from where it sunk into Soleil. A few moments later, it was long enough to easily fit into both of them at once.

“Perfect!” Soleil said. “Now…”

Soleil grabbed the dildo with both hands, positioning it in front of Lute’s entrance. Lute bit her lip, and with Soleil’s guidance, the other head of the dildo disappeared inside her, filling her with a tight sensation far stronger than Soleil’s fingers. The unique feeling of it sent a shiver down her spine, drawing out a quiet moan.

“See! You can do it, cutie!” Soleil grinned. “Now c’mon – let’s do this. Both of us, together. We can make each other feel good.”

“Is that what love is?” Lute asked softly, more to herself than Soleil. “Making one’s partner… feel good?”

“Mhm,” Soleil said, inching the dildo inside her. “Whether it’s going out for tea, buying gifts… or doing this.”

She pushed forward, and the dildo drove deeper into both of them. Lute bit her lip to stifle a yelp, feeling herself stretch and fill in an unfamiliar way. It was a tight fit, and they found it hard to move at first; but soon she and Soleil found a rhythm. Soleil pushed forward as Lute pulled back – and slowly but surely, they pushed closer and closer together.

There was a logic to it that Lute could appreciate. A simple logic. A purely mechanical process that wasn’t confusing or abstract or hard to follow.

It was strange – a brand new sensation. It wasn’t just the stretching, or the fullness, or the movement. It was…

Love.

As she sunk further into Soleil with each push, she felt the same sensation in her chest. It was love.

It made her happy. She wanted Soleil to be happy. That was all it was when it was distilled down to its basic elements.

She finally understood.

And there it was again – that smile on her lips. The body’s natural reaction to happiness; to love.

As the two of them thrust the dildo back and forth into one another, Soleil leaned forward, never slowing down, and whispered in Lute’s ear.

“Love’s all about one thing, Cutie Lutie. Making the person you like smile.”

She brought her lips to Lute’s, and the two of them melted into a passionate kiss.

Lute didn’t worry about the details. She’d already made so many mental notes of the practices; the sensations; the reactions occurring within her, both physical and chemical. She’d gathered all the data she’d needed. All that was left was to enjoy the moment.

She put her free hand on Soleil’s smooth cheek, and the two of them grunted into their kiss as the dildo moved in and out in time. The warm, pulsating feeling in Lute’s core spread throughout her entire body, making her shudder and moan. Soleil’s hand grabbed her own, pulling it from her cheek and holding it in place around her waist. Her other hand found its way to Lute’s purple hair, stroking it softly as they continued to make out.

She and Soleil were wrapped up in one another, eyes closed as their lips pressed together again and again, tongues entwining. Lute’s heart beat. Her hand stroked Soleil’s waist as they thrust together. She moaned into Soleil’s mouth.

She wanted to see Soleil smile. Soleil wanted to see her smile. A smile was just the movement of muscles twisting a facial structure of bone and skin into a particular arrangement to create a pleasing visual. But it was also the expression of love.

And it was enough.

There was no intense build-up; no prolonged welling of feeling.

Their kiss broke, and their eyes met – and then they came, buckling their hips against each other. Their bodies convulsed, juices spraying out in a high of indescribable intimacy; and the two of them moaned in unison as the sensation reached its peak. Soleil’s body gave out, collapsing against Lute, and the two women held each other close, their hearts pounding and breath heaving.

With a wave of Lute’s hand, the dildo dissipated, leaving only their slick hips and thighs. Her fingers trailed the side of Soleil’s face, wiping a stray lock of hair from her eyes, and the girl smiled up at her.

“Thank you, Soleil,” she said. “I think… I’ve reached a conclusion for my research.”

“Oh?” Soleil asked, with an impish little smirk that Lute found—what was the word Soleil had offered when they’d first met?—ah, yes. Adorable. “I knew it’d help you out, cutie. Practical experience always beats books, right?”

Lute was still smiling. It hardly suited someone of her vast intellect to smile so stupidly… but she didn’t care.

“Yes. Perhaps it does.”

Soleil snuggled into her, resting her head on Lute’s bosom. “So… you gonna write something on it? I’d love to read it… if it’s not too complicated.”

“I certainly have the pages for such a thesis now, don’t I? All thanks to you.”

She paused, looking down at Soleil. She felt so calm; so fulfilled at last. Maybe Soleil had been right about the heart – somehow, in a way that biology couldn’t explain, it could feel love just like the brain.

“But perhaps not. It strikes me more that… the meaning of love should be left for an individual to ascertain for themselves; not to be laid out in a paper and understood as a set, easily-defined phenomenon. Even as a scholar without peer… I’m not sure words or academia could ever capture the full depth of it.”

Her smile grew.

“Though I suppose some authors, ever in pursuit of the fanciful and dreamy, would disagree with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever get so carried away that you make the silly gag/meta story your longest one yet? All combined, it's probably almost the length of a single chapter in Lute's dissertations.


End file.
